Social Media Voyeurism: Kate Middleton's case

Recently, the news related to Kate Middleton's personal photos have become a hot issue on the internet.  Apparently, Prince William and Kate Middleton were enjoying some private time and Kate decided to well.. lose some clothes. So, we all know that this is the latest embarrassing news story involving a royal and their nude pictures including Prince Harry!.

The problem is people really like this kind of news. They want to buy magazine or even log on to websites that contain these nude pictures. Publishers pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for these photos in order to get more money from the sales and social media sites. According to one of article that i read, currently the search for "Kate Middleton nude pictures" has over a million searches on Google. People gone crazy over such news!. Social media allows people to read, react, and share juicy information which pushes people into what is called Social Media Voyeurism.

So, what is social media voyeurism? Traditionally, a voyeur can be defined as a person who is watches someone secretly in perverted way. Voyeurism in social media offers our society secretly watch things that they most likely do not want others to know about. We have also become such voyeurs of information. We want to know every detail about celebrities, news stories, and popular culture stories. CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and other media stations provided an over load on information and unhealthy fascination on people's lives.

The social media voyeurism plays out on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and other platforms and it feeds our need to know everything about everyone. The whole concept of Facebook is based on the idea that we really need to tell everyone what we are thinking but the fact is, no one needs to know that!.

In the end, we need to discount and put boundaries about what we watch and share with others on social media, celebrity news for example. We really need to resist the temptation to be drawn into social media voyeurism.